the elephant wrote:"Or Best Offer" implies the best offer will be taken. Period.

But who chooses the "or" part of it? I think it has to be the seller. There is an option -- either the asking price, or, the best offer. I think that "Or Best Offer" literally means, "The price is the asking price, unless I decide that I want to accept a lower offer... in which case, the "best" offer will be determined by me, by whatever criteria for "best" that I decide (e.g., an "easy" deal for less money, can be 'better" than a difficult deal for more money).

I would never expect that it means "The price is the asking price, unless nobody wants to pay the asking price, in which case I blindly will accept the highest offer I receive that is less than the asking price, no matter what." Because isn't that just an auction, where a buy it now option has not been exercised by the buyer?

Your scenario seems more like "Else, Best Offer."

Bigger question, IMO, is what kind of person bothers to sue someone about a best offer they made to someone on Craigslist? Talk about litigious...

I'm a bit surprised that IIIPOPES hasn't chimed in here. (Keeping in mind that contract law in different countries can be different) OBO (or best offer) is an offer to agree to a contract (ie sale) and means "I will accept the "best offer". In many cases being the highest monetary amount. One could say OBO over XXX$$$ - in effect a reserve price or some other conditions to be met by the buyer. It goes back to "common law" where somebody says I want to sell this - make me an offer and if it is the "best I will sell even if it isn't" as much as I really would like to get.

The vendor is offering to be trustworthy and must fulfil that trust -OR - be untrustworthy.

Short story - be careful what you say, and in particular, put in print.

the elephant wrote:"Or Best Offer" implies the best offer will be taken. Period.

Any time something is implied, there is room for interpretation.

The concept that OBO carries a legal obligation is very interesting, so I just spent about 15 minutes trying to track down more opinions. What I found was a variety of opinions (some from people purporting to be lawyers) with the majority of opinions seeming to be that there is no obligation. I couldn't find a single statement that any state law requires a person to sell at an OBO that in unsatisfactory to the seller.

Mr. Elephant, please tell us the state in which this decision occurred, and any other pertinent information. I fell free in requesting this since you have written a long post advocating a policy change in TubeNet so it must be an important issue for you.